The United States of America is well on the way to becoming a fascist theocracy.
"We the people" still think there are rules, they still believe that freedom will reign [and ring], they still think they are safe, it's all going to be ok, like in the movies ..... but when this process is finished you will not even have the ballot box to turn to.
True, 45 is the smoke screen. If you look at Project 2025, you can clearly see the underlying agenda. It’s a frightening 900+ page document that echos a Twilight Zone I saw 60 years ago. Look it up by its title “To Serve Man.”
Project 2025, created by the Federalist Society, if implemented , will ultimately homogenize & transform our country into Viktor Orban’s Hungary!
Indeed, in Poland (see message above) the Law and Justice party of Kaczynski spent their time and focus stealing, so even after 8 years the situation was salvageable.
Project 2025 are ready, well funded abd they won't mess around.
The young ones are the ones who have grown up with active shooter drills since Pre-K.
They are sick and tired of the gun culture & gun violence in our country.
They also have been part of the “ Me Too” generation of thought regarding oppressing women. They also are less hung up about gender, sexual, ethnic & racial identities.
They also will not support a predominantly male imposed
ruling in Congress, on the SCOTUS, controlling of women’s bodies.
It will be the young ppl and women who can save our country.
Yes, everything you say is true Jazz. I was replying to a message about followers of HCR, not many young people read these missives.
But you are right - the election in Poland last November - it was young people and women who plucked the country from the dark abyss. Poland was just two steps behind Hungary on the way to corrupt authoritarianism. (they are having a hell of a job cleaning up the mess, it'll take many years)
The whole of Europe breathed a sigh of relief.
But they were consolidated and led by a charismstic leader (Tusk)
That is what America lacks, conspicuously.
In America, I don't see the Poland of last November... I see the Poland of 8 years previously, sleepily walking into the darkness.
I actually think we do have quite a few charismatic folk out there.!!!!!(smile emoji) The elders need to let go, move on and let the younger folk step forward. I'm older than you, ha!..... I marched on Washington after Kent State, and "we" had all the answers, not! The crowds after George Floyd & the Stoneman Douglas massacre, not just in this country, but internationally, were "ONE VOICE."
"Only five weeks after the shooting, the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington drew up to 800,000 people, and inspired sister marches in 800 cities around the globe." 5 weeks after those murders, an organized coalition stood up, became a movement, and is still doing the necessary work to bring about change. We are impatient as a ppl and want everything yesterday. This entire clusterf&#%k is all about fear and racism and it's happening all over our world. Take a look at France. It's all fear of "other." Crazy,right?
When I get down, I think of that "ONE VOICE" and know that what seems impossible is possible. The coverage I saw of those marches brought me back, but is more palpable now bc I am older. The young ppl were a united front and it didn't matter who they were, where they were from, what color or religion they were..... It gave and still gives me a lot of hope re: possibility..and for that, I am hope-filled that they are carrying the torch I carried in 1970. There's only one thing we all must do....
We all have to get out an f---ing VOTE.
If ppl sit home it will be relinquishing our individual power to the "strong man" consciousness and those of us who still believe in the democratic experiment, can say "we told you so." Fear never wins.
Problem solved!! Biden can have Seal Team 6 kill Donald Trump! Biden has total immunity to do that. Do it on the 4th of July for a double celebration. Someone thank Putin for the great idea.
On my reading of the Supreme Court's decision, Biden would be perfectly entitled to do this, and to kill any other political opponents he wished along the way. The Court would be hoist on its own petard.
I missed that. I was under the impression that ALL presidents in the future can hide behind immunity. I wonder what would happen if Biden (who never would do this) if 'something" did happen to trump? He obviously is threat to national security. Putin has killed or imprisoned people for less. Just saying.
1984 should be taught and discussed in Philosophy classes nationwide. So much wisdom in Orwell's observations put into fiction. How about that newspeak- limit thought by limiting vocabulary. Winston's job was to rewrite history the next day before they archived the newspapers. Even where Winston hides from the telescreens is behind an empty book case. Where are the books? We are on our way to this dumbing down too when all voices get the same weight thanks to the internet. That is my memory 44 years after reading it in a philosophy class called Contemporary and Moral Issues.. Warning bells are always there but do we hear them?
If you haven't read The Handmaid's Tale, you should. Every thing happened slowly. First the women's credit card, then dress, so on and so forth until women were sex objects who cycles were monitored, and property of the Commanders. Doctors were executed for assisting in abortions. Doctors now are being punished-fines, losing their licenses. I will stop here so I won't be a spoiler. BTW it was my first intentional banned book read.
I'm starting to feel as though we are living in that old Star Trek episode where the big reveal is Kirk explaining what "E Plebnista" actually means, by reading the preamble to the Constitution.
I looked it up - "The Omega Glory" - it's truly cringey in a bunch of ways and the speech is quintessential Shatner, but there you have it. That's how my mind works sometimes. Even with all that, "These words were not written for Chiefs" feels pretty relevant right now.
A reasonably intelligent 8th grader could refute the "rationale" of the Supreme Court decision. A president only needs such broad immunity if it turns out, not mentioning any names, that the president is an f--ing crook and a sociopath. Has anybody on the Supreme Court, among the conservatives, contemplated the notion of checks and balances? Did they sleep through their 8th grade history and government class??? How has Trump drawn the Republican party and the Court into his cult of BS??? It's for the sake of the culture wars, I suppose . . . can't some plain spoken person -- Jon Stewart? Jimmy Kimmel? Heather Cox Richardson? -- find a platform allowing them to cut through Trump's BS, which he constantly spews on Sociopathic Lying (I think that is what it is called).? Not to mention the ridiculous actions of the "Supreme" Court.
Chris is right. This has been the Republican plan for 40 years, and we haven’t been paying close enough attention. Finding Donald Trump was a dream come true for them. And Mitch McConnell paved the way to finish the transformation. With every action this Supreme Court has taken over the past 3 years I have been saying one thing. Stopping this slide into autocracy requires a Democratic President, a Democratic majority in the House, AND a SUPER MAJORITY in the Senate. With all 3 for at least 2 years those who believe in our democracy & the rule of law can right this debacle with laws and an expanded Supreme Court.
I am not hopeful. Trump needs to be locked up and blocked from the political process, as he should have been way back. Keeping a dictator out of power is too important a job to be left to the vagaries of the electoral process.
Thank you for saying it how it is. No more guard rails in the law to protect our citizens from harm caused by the actions of others, even if the laws are on the books as all regulations are now at risk. The word Trump used in your quote seems most appropriate to him- stench. Surreal that "stinking thinking" has taken over well educated people in power. I am so grateful to you for the work you do. We have to help people raise their thinking and compassion toward others or we will spend all of our time just trying to get back to the base level that needed improvement, not gutting. Your ending was also quite astute. When I saw the case title, I thought how appropriate that it is Donald Trump versus the whole United States of America. The Court said he won and beat American values but I think the case of the United States versus Donald Trump is the yet undecided case we are all still in.
Will Trump and his sycophants destroy respected institutions further while going after good people who try to stop the downward spiral or will Trump and other leaders of that party be seen for the power grabbing law breakers they have turned out to be, with Trump as the emperor with golden depends?
There is no longer any basis for continuing the previous configuration of states within the "United States of America."
With its disastrous, dangerous ruling, the Supreme Court has split the U.S. into two countries: one believing in the rule of law, the other, in a fascist theocracy. There is no place for people believing in the rule of law in a country whose legal arbiters are men like Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, who clearly believe in fascist theocracy and dictatorship rather than the rule of law. Therefore, separation of one group of states from the other is both inevitable and necessary. If the U.S. were a marriage, it would have been in divorce court decades ago. It is past time we stopped maintaining the travesty of any possible commonality of interest between the two groups of states, and allowed the theocrats to go their way so that we, the sane people still believing in the Constitution and the rule of law, can live in the America we grew up thinking everyone was entitled to. Between fascist democracy and constitutional democracy, there is no middle ground. One cannot be a fascist theocrat on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a constitutional democrat on the other days. Every state must now step up and choose which path it will take. The process can't happen soon enough. The alternative is enslavement or civil war.
FISA limits the Federal Government’s ability to do surveillance on American citizens. Can a president now disregard FISA limits?
US Code 52 requires the preservation of election documents and equipment. Can a president have the equipment seized and prevent investigations of election fraud?
If a member of the administration is convicted of a crime after a discussion with the president, can the president pardon the criminal?
I know you will be preaching to the choir, but is there a way you can tell your readers about project 2025? I’ve been doing a bit of research & Nichol Wallace had a segment about it today. It’s time to ring all the alarm bells.
I realize that talk show hosts aren't most scholarly way learn about something, but John Oliver had what I thought was a great show on program 2025. Not the tons of details you would get if you read the 900 page treatise, but it will give you the magnitude of destruction it will cause. The point that scared me the most was about setting up the higher tier employees in a class where they are at the disposal of the president and he could replace them at will regardless if the replacement has the necessary qualifications. Sort of like DeVos with no public school experience.
I agree completely & the Supreme Court just made that harder, not to mention Judge Cannon who is eyeing a seat on that court if Trump is back in power. But we have to have faith that we can make a difference & stop it. If we don’t, we will lose .
It’s sad that those who support this disastrous degradation of our country on behalf of a lying, narcissistic sociopath have no idea what they will lose
This is a very gloomy interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling. It's not necessarily that bad. The voters are now the jury in deciding whether they want their president to be an unaccountable king. https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/voters-are-now-jury-in-trump-trials
Congress can presumably make laws restricting presidential powers. This decision for example doesn't specifically invalidate a host of laws that require a president to act in certain ways. I would like to see scholars of presidential powers weigh in on this.
Christopher, I have not read the decision yet but I presume it does not specifically eliminate all restrictions on presidential powers. I presume it will take scholars of presidential powers some time to sort all this out.
Dictators are rarely defeated at the ballot box. Their defeat is, in my view, too important a job to be left to the vagaries of the electoral process. We must find a surer, indeed absolutely foolproof way of keeping Trump and his fascist hordes out of power.
Jon, what might that "surer, indeed absolutely foolproof way" of keeping Trump out of power other than the ballot box? If the Supreme Court knocked him out of the election at this late date, given that he's the presumptive GOP nominee, there would be huge backlash from his fascist hordes who would probably resort to violence that would make 1/6 look like a tea party or a trial run.
That may be true. But the Supreme Court decision has effectively ended democracy in the U.S. To beat a dictator, one must be prepared to use his methods. For us to go up against Trump with only the vote is like the Ethiopian army going up against the modern Italian air force with spears, bows, and arrows. Or, to put it another way, if someone is not using Queensbury rules on you, you have to be prepared not to use it on them.
Heh. I was there when Occupy Oakland tried to re-take its camping spot at City Hall, standing less than 50 yards from Scott Olsen when his skull was turned to putty by a "non-lethal crowd control measure" fired by the police. I helped form a Bridge Caucus between the "peacefuls" and the "window smashers."
I know your argument and I reject it, even knowing that World War II was the largest Antifa action in recent history.
World War II, you say? That war would probably not have been necessary had the German government (Weimar) responded properly to the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, shooting Hitler along with most of his associates (who were shot) instead of giving him a light jail sentence and then releasing him altogether. This is a simple matter of self-defense. . .as the Beer Hall Putsch should have been.
The only other available option is secession of those states still believing in the rule of law. We cannot continue as we are. . .if we do the entire country will be enslaved.
Don't forget. . .January 6 was America's Beer Hall Putsch.
World War II might also not have been necessary had the victors of WW I not decided to extract their pound of flesh at Versailles, or had Chamberlain decided any number of things differently, or had eugenicists and robber barons from other countries not seen such attractive opportunities in HH’s charisma to further their own agendas - or ultimately, had people with eyes to see not assumed that somebody else with bigger "power" would take care of things, because that's what some Big Guy with power is supposed to do.
This beast has many heads. Pointing out and lopping off the one with the biggest smelliest mouth is only buying time. We need to stop iconizing malevolence (or salvation for that matter) as single individuals, because that’s not where those things are.
We lend our own power to individuals provisionally, and sometimes we need to be able to take it back when those individuals go off the rails. I'm pretty sure that's the experiment our Founders started with this government, and they tried to give us a way to do so within a framework of laws.
I think, in a way, that’s the point of the talk Heather gave on Facebook the night of the ruling. When it comes right down to it, we're the backstop. We laughed when the GOP nominated Reagan, and again when they nominated Bush II, and again when they trotted out Trump. But here we are. If you think the only way to stop this slide is to cut off the Stinkhead of the moment, then are you prepared for who they bring out next? I think following your suggestion is an admission that the experiment has already failed.
Then what is the oath to uphold and defend the constitution? Does the constitution even matter? If the former president can threaten citizens like rep Cheney with Military tribunals then the rule of law protects no one. What about free speech? Are we to fear speaking out against our government by the threat of being called traitor? I resist living in fear with all my heart and feel unprepared to live in an autocratic theocracy. The underground has never before felt like such an imminent possibility. Dr Richardson what options rise before us? How could I participate in your politics talks that I see occasionally on you tube? Now more than ever I need a diet of truth.
The states that believe in the rule of law must separate from the theocracy-loving federal government, and start their own government. That is the only answer, other than civil war.
I see F---Bookey erased my comment... ( Not to their community standards ) That's about how today parallels of the 1936 timeline and the 2016 election and the Republicans are truly like the Nazi party trying to gain full control...
This is not about Donald Trump.
He is being used - he is only a useful idiot.
The United States of America is well on the way to becoming a fascist theocracy.
"We the people" still think there are rules, they still believe that freedom will reign [and ring], they still think they are safe, it's all going to be ok, like in the movies ..... but when this process is finished you will not even have the ballot box to turn to.
Wake up America
How did the US end up with monarchists? I realize they are oligarchs in disguise, but monarchists? Do they ALL have brain worms?
True, 45 is the smoke screen. If you look at Project 2025, you can clearly see the underlying agenda. It’s a frightening 900+ page document that echos a Twilight Zone I saw 60 years ago. Look it up by its title “To Serve Man.”
Project 2025, created by the Federalist Society, if implemented , will ultimately homogenize & transform our country into Viktor Orban’s Hungary!
Indeed, in Poland (see message above) the Law and Justice party of Kaczynski spent their time and focus stealing, so even after 8 years the situation was salvageable.
Project 2025 are ready, well funded abd they won't mess around.
The situation is dire.
Trust me, everyone who follows the professor is WIDE awake and horrified, but continuing the fight.
That's not many people though, and no young ones
Not true
The young ones are the ones who have grown up with active shooter drills since Pre-K.
They are sick and tired of the gun culture & gun violence in our country.
They also have been part of the “ Me Too” generation of thought regarding oppressing women. They also are less hung up about gender, sexual, ethnic & racial identities.
They also will not support a predominantly male imposed
ruling in Congress, on the SCOTUS, controlling of women’s bodies.
It will be the young ppl and women who can save our country.
Yes, everything you say is true Jazz. I was replying to a message about followers of HCR, not many young people read these missives.
But you are right - the election in Poland last November - it was young people and women who plucked the country from the dark abyss. Poland was just two steps behind Hungary on the way to corrupt authoritarianism. (they are having a hell of a job cleaning up the mess, it'll take many years)
The whole of Europe breathed a sigh of relief.
But they were consolidated and led by a charismstic leader (Tusk)
That is what America lacks, conspicuously.
In America, I don't see the Poland of last November... I see the Poland of 8 years previously, sleepily walking into the darkness.
I actually think we do have quite a few charismatic folk out there.!!!!!(smile emoji) The elders need to let go, move on and let the younger folk step forward. I'm older than you, ha!..... I marched on Washington after Kent State, and "we" had all the answers, not! The crowds after George Floyd & the Stoneman Douglas massacre, not just in this country, but internationally, were "ONE VOICE."
"Only five weeks after the shooting, the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington drew up to 800,000 people, and inspired sister marches in 800 cities around the globe." 5 weeks after those murders, an organized coalition stood up, became a movement, and is still doing the necessary work to bring about change. We are impatient as a ppl and want everything yesterday. This entire clusterf&#%k is all about fear and racism and it's happening all over our world. Take a look at France. It's all fear of "other." Crazy,right?
When I get down, I think of that "ONE VOICE" and know that what seems impossible is possible. The coverage I saw of those marches brought me back, but is more palpable now bc I am older. The young ppl were a united front and it didn't matter who they were, where they were from, what color or religion they were..... It gave and still gives me a lot of hope re: possibility..and for that, I am hope-filled that they are carrying the torch I carried in 1970. There's only one thing we all must do....
We all have to get out an f---ing VOTE.
If ppl sit home it will be relinquishing our individual power to the "strong man" consciousness and those of us who still believe in the democratic experiment, can say "we told you so." Fear never wins.
We can still vote. Baby Boomers are still a power. Elections are sometimes determined by only a few votes.
Problem solved!! Biden can have Seal Team 6 kill Donald Trump! Biden has total immunity to do that. Do it on the 4th of July for a double celebration. Someone thank Putin for the great idea.
On my reading of the Supreme Court's decision, Biden would be perfectly entitled to do this, and to kill any other political opponents he wished along the way. The Court would be hoist on its own petard.
Understand the reading again. The opinion ONLY applies to tfg, no one else.
I missed that. I was under the impression that ALL presidents in the future can hide behind immunity. I wonder what would happen if Biden (who never would do this) if 'something" did happen to trump? He obviously is threat to national security. Putin has killed or imprisoned people for less. Just saying.
Now it is time again to read '1984' by George Orwell. It may soon happen that 45 = 47 and
4/2 = 5.
1984 should be taught and discussed in Philosophy classes nationwide. So much wisdom in Orwell's observations put into fiction. How about that newspeak- limit thought by limiting vocabulary. Winston's job was to rewrite history the next day before they archived the newspapers. Even where Winston hides from the telescreens is behind an empty book case. Where are the books? We are on our way to this dumbing down too when all voices get the same weight thanks to the internet. That is my memory 44 years after reading it in a philosophy class called Contemporary and Moral Issues.. Warning bells are always there but do we hear them?
If you haven't read The Handmaid's Tale, you should. Every thing happened slowly. First the women's credit card, then dress, so on and so forth until women were sex objects who cycles were monitored, and property of the Commanders. Doctors were executed for assisting in abortions. Doctors now are being punished-fines, losing their licenses. I will stop here so I won't be a spoiler. BTW it was my first intentional banned book read.
'
'
Muchas Gracias. I love Margaret Atwood.
I'm starting to feel as though we are living in that old Star Trek episode where the big reveal is Kirk explaining what "E Plebnista" actually means, by reading the preamble to the Constitution.
I looked it up - "The Omega Glory" - it's truly cringey in a bunch of ways and the speech is quintessential Shatner, but there you have it. That's how my mind works sometimes. Even with all that, "These words were not written for Chiefs" feels pretty relevant right now.
You can find it on YouTube.
Devastating. Absolutely devastating. We have got to keep DJT from mounting the throne the SCOTUS just built for him.
A reasonably intelligent 8th grader could refute the "rationale" of the Supreme Court decision. A president only needs such broad immunity if it turns out, not mentioning any names, that the president is an f--ing crook and a sociopath. Has anybody on the Supreme Court, among the conservatives, contemplated the notion of checks and balances? Did they sleep through their 8th grade history and government class??? How has Trump drawn the Republican party and the Court into his cult of BS??? It's for the sake of the culture wars, I suppose . . . can't some plain spoken person -- Jon Stewart? Jimmy Kimmel? Heather Cox Richardson? -- find a platform allowing them to cut through Trump's BS, which he constantly spews on Sociopathic Lying (I think that is what it is called).? Not to mention the ridiculous actions of the "Supreme" Court.
Did these justices forget what they swore to that no man is above the law? I saw videos of them earnestly professing that no man was above the law.
Chris is right. This has been the Republican plan for 40 years, and we haven’t been paying close enough attention. Finding Donald Trump was a dream come true for them. And Mitch McConnell paved the way to finish the transformation. With every action this Supreme Court has taken over the past 3 years I have been saying one thing. Stopping this slide into autocracy requires a Democratic President, a Democratic majority in the House, AND a SUPER MAJORITY in the Senate. With all 3 for at least 2 years those who believe in our democracy & the rule of law can right this debacle with laws and an expanded Supreme Court.
We still have time to fix this.
I am not hopeful. Trump needs to be locked up and blocked from the political process, as he should have been way back. Keeping a dictator out of power is too important a job to be left to the vagaries of the electoral process.
Thank you for saying it how it is. No more guard rails in the law to protect our citizens from harm caused by the actions of others, even if the laws are on the books as all regulations are now at risk. The word Trump used in your quote seems most appropriate to him- stench. Surreal that "stinking thinking" has taken over well educated people in power. I am so grateful to you for the work you do. We have to help people raise their thinking and compassion toward others or we will spend all of our time just trying to get back to the base level that needed improvement, not gutting. Your ending was also quite astute. When I saw the case title, I thought how appropriate that it is Donald Trump versus the whole United States of America. The Court said he won and beat American values but I think the case of the United States versus Donald Trump is the yet undecided case we are all still in.
Will Trump and his sycophants destroy respected institutions further while going after good people who try to stop the downward spiral or will Trump and other leaders of that party be seen for the power grabbing law breakers they have turned out to be, with Trump as the emperor with golden depends?
There is no longer any basis for continuing the previous configuration of states within the "United States of America."
With its disastrous, dangerous ruling, the Supreme Court has split the U.S. into two countries: one believing in the rule of law, the other, in a fascist theocracy. There is no place for people believing in the rule of law in a country whose legal arbiters are men like Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, who clearly believe in fascist theocracy and dictatorship rather than the rule of law. Therefore, separation of one group of states from the other is both inevitable and necessary. If the U.S. were a marriage, it would have been in divorce court decades ago. It is past time we stopped maintaining the travesty of any possible commonality of interest between the two groups of states, and allowed the theocrats to go their way so that we, the sane people still believing in the Constitution and the rule of law, can live in the America we grew up thinking everyone was entitled to. Between fascist democracy and constitutional democracy, there is no middle ground. One cannot be a fascist theocrat on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a constitutional democrat on the other days. Every state must now step up and choose which path it will take. The process can't happen soon enough. The alternative is enslavement or civil war.
Terrifying ... 😔😔😔
Yes, It certainly is to any American that is alert and knows history.
FISA limits the Federal Government’s ability to do surveillance on American citizens. Can a president now disregard FISA limits?
US Code 52 requires the preservation of election documents and equipment. Can a president have the equipment seized and prevent investigations of election fraud?
If a member of the administration is convicted of a crime after a discussion with the president, can the president pardon the criminal?
Yes.
Heather
I know you will be preaching to the choir, but is there a way you can tell your readers about project 2025? I’ve been doing a bit of research & Nichol Wallace had a segment about it today. It’s time to ring all the alarm bells.
I realize that talk show hosts aren't most scholarly way learn about something, but John Oliver had what I thought was a great show on program 2025. Not the tons of details you would get if you read the 900 page treatise, but it will give you the magnitude of destruction it will cause. The point that scared me the most was about setting up the higher tier employees in a class where they are at the disposal of the president and he could replace them at will regardless if the replacement has the necessary qualifications. Sort of like DeVos with no public school experience.
I agree completely & the Supreme Court just made that harder, not to mention Judge Cannon who is eyeing a seat on that court if Trump is back in power. But we have to have faith that we can make a difference & stop it. If we don’t, we will lose .
It’s sad that those who support this disastrous degradation of our country on behalf of a lying, narcissistic sociopath have no idea what they will lose
This is a very gloomy interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling. It's not necessarily that bad. The voters are now the jury in deciding whether they want their president to be an unaccountable king. https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/voters-are-now-jury-in-trump-trials
That is not actually true, Jim.
The voters decide whether they want their unaccountable King to be either Trump or Biden.
That is the vote now
Congress can presumably make laws restricting presidential powers. This decision for example doesn't specifically invalidate a host of laws that require a president to act in certain ways. I would like to see scholars of presidential powers weigh in on this.
Christopher, I have not read the decision yet but I presume it does not specifically eliminate all restrictions on presidential powers. I presume it will take scholars of presidential powers some time to sort all this out.
Dictators are rarely defeated at the ballot box. Their defeat is, in my view, too important a job to be left to the vagaries of the electoral process. We must find a surer, indeed absolutely foolproof way of keeping Trump and his fascist hordes out of power.
Jon, what might that "surer, indeed absolutely foolproof way" of keeping Trump out of power other than the ballot box? If the Supreme Court knocked him out of the election at this late date, given that he's the presumptive GOP nominee, there would be huge backlash from his fascist hordes who would probably resort to violence that would make 1/6 look like a tea party or a trial run.
Locking him up for a long time for his 34 existing felonies would be one option. . .the more moderate option.
Sure, foolproof ways, like final solutions, are the province of dictators, unfortunately.
That may be true. But the Supreme Court decision has effectively ended democracy in the U.S. To beat a dictator, one must be prepared to use his methods. For us to go up against Trump with only the vote is like the Ethiopian army going up against the modern Italian air force with spears, bows, and arrows. Or, to put it another way, if someone is not using Queensbury rules on you, you have to be prepared not to use it on them.
Heh. I was there when Occupy Oakland tried to re-take its camping spot at City Hall, standing less than 50 yards from Scott Olsen when his skull was turned to putty by a "non-lethal crowd control measure" fired by the police. I helped form a Bridge Caucus between the "peacefuls" and the "window smashers."
I know your argument and I reject it, even knowing that World War II was the largest Antifa action in recent history.
World War II, you say? That war would probably not have been necessary had the German government (Weimar) responded properly to the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, shooting Hitler along with most of his associates (who were shot) instead of giving him a light jail sentence and then releasing him altogether. This is a simple matter of self-defense. . .as the Beer Hall Putsch should have been.
The only other available option is secession of those states still believing in the rule of law. We cannot continue as we are. . .if we do the entire country will be enslaved.
Don't forget. . .January 6 was America's Beer Hall Putsch.
World War II might also not have been necessary had the victors of WW I not decided to extract their pound of flesh at Versailles, or had Chamberlain decided any number of things differently, or had eugenicists and robber barons from other countries not seen such attractive opportunities in HH’s charisma to further their own agendas - or ultimately, had people with eyes to see not assumed that somebody else with bigger "power" would take care of things, because that's what some Big Guy with power is supposed to do.
This beast has many heads. Pointing out and lopping off the one with the biggest smelliest mouth is only buying time. We need to stop iconizing malevolence (or salvation for that matter) as single individuals, because that’s not where those things are.
We lend our own power to individuals provisionally, and sometimes we need to be able to take it back when those individuals go off the rails. I'm pretty sure that's the experiment our Founders started with this government, and they tried to give us a way to do so within a framework of laws.
I think, in a way, that’s the point of the talk Heather gave on Facebook the night of the ruling. When it comes right down to it, we're the backstop. We laughed when the GOP nominated Reagan, and again when they nominated Bush II, and again when they trotted out Trump. But here we are. If you think the only way to stop this slide is to cut off the Stinkhead of the moment, then are you prepared for who they bring out next? I think following your suggestion is an admission that the experiment has already failed.
Then what is the oath to uphold and defend the constitution? Does the constitution even matter? If the former president can threaten citizens like rep Cheney with Military tribunals then the rule of law protects no one. What about free speech? Are we to fear speaking out against our government by the threat of being called traitor? I resist living in fear with all my heart and feel unprepared to live in an autocratic theocracy. The underground has never before felt like such an imminent possibility. Dr Richardson what options rise before us? How could I participate in your politics talks that I see occasionally on you tube? Now more than ever I need a diet of truth.
The states that believe in the rule of law must separate from the theocracy-loving federal government, and start their own government. That is the only answer, other than civil war.
I see F---Bookey erased my comment... ( Not to their community standards ) That's about how today parallels of the 1936 timeline and the 2016 election and the Republicans are truly like the Nazi party trying to gain full control...
Don't forget: January 6 was America's Beer Hall Putsch.